Hollow Soul
by TheShock
Summary: [Entry for Writers Anonymus's Halloween Challenge, 2016] Frisk knew there was a degree of animosity between himself and Sans the Skeleton, but wasn't really aware of how deep it was. Follow Frisk as he falls down the rabbit hole, struggling to find a way to lift Sans' hatred towards him. (Male!Frisk, set in Underfell AU, rated T to be safe. RE-POSTED, PREVIOUS STORY WAS DELETED.)


Hello, fellow authors!

After a long time, and I'm glad I participated in the Halloween Challenge...

I have officially refurbished this entry, and it's five hundred words shorter than the first.

I hope it will be much more enjoyable than the first time...

Guidelines to read this story, if you really need them:

1\. Sans's speech is purposefully lowercased, as it's canon for him to speak like this.

2\. _Italic writing_ marks internal thoughts.

3\. If you see things written like this: [ACT], or LOVE, the first mark options within the Undertale UI, while the others are topics within the canon.

4\. Underlined writing marks emphasizing something in a character's speech.

5\. **Bold writing** marks a character's shouting, and when it's written like this **(Flashback:)** or **[Ethereal Plane]** it's to mark certain scenes.

* * *

"When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane."  
(Herman Hesse) _  
_

* * *

Frisk walked through the dimly lit corridors of the castle, as his footsteps rang through the seemingly abandoned building. An opened window let the chilling wind whip on his face, sending shivers down his spine, the striped shirt was not that helpful against this kind of cold, not to mention it revealed the numerous scars and burns on his arms - he looked at those injuries with a mixture of tenderness and confusion, as he couldn't understand why the monsters were so incredibly vicious towards him. A sigh escaped his lips as he checked through his pockets for anything in his inventory, and discovered that he kept the Butterscotch-Cinnamon pie from Toriel, only to be filled with tears as he remembered standing against her full might.

 **(Flashback: Toriel's Fight)**

"M-my child...Don't you understand?...I want to spare you from a painful death!" Toriel said as her vicious gaze pierced through Frisk, the latter determined to make her pass, without any violence on his part.

"If everyone wants to kill me so badly..." the boy retorted using her words, "Then I want them to prove themselves. Prove that they can also be nice to me!"

"You l-leave me no c-choice, my child." the goat monster smirked in an evil manner, "You will only leave...as a charred corpse!"

Toriel then started shooting many fireballs in a hectic manner, forcing Frisk to make backflips and even block a few fireballs with his hands, leaving out a yelp of pain as he did so, awakening something within the goat monster as her red eyes widened in shock, and lowered her paws, extinguishing the flames surrounding herself and the human child. Frisk then took her by surprise, by hugging her so tightly, despite her somewhat fearful look, making the goat monster unable to resist the child's touch, and kneeled to his level - if the others before him were afraid of her looks, he wasn't afraid - her paws were still shaking.

"Wh-what is this feeling..." her voice broke through the eerie silence of the Ruins.

"This feeling, Mom..." Frisk smiled, "this feeling is love. I love you, Mom, no matter how frightening you might be right now..."

 **(End Flashback)**

 _No matter how scary you were with your odd, possessive behaviour towards me,_ Frisk completed the thought as he placed the slice back in his pockets, and started advancing further in the castle, until he reached a SAVE point. He touched the star as a hot-cold feeling passed through his hand, and then noticed Flowey standing somewhere in the shadows, surprised that the human was still alive, after the whole ordeal with Toriel, Papyrus and Undyne - and came closer to Frisk as he wanted to see how was his friend doing.

"Howdy, human!" Flowey said, "I'm surprised you got this far, in spite of my warnings."

"Look, Flowey..." Frisk sighed, "I won't give up on offering them my [MERCY], okay? They're just..."

 _They have fallen so far off, I don't understand what is happening to them!_ the child thought as he looked at the flower before him, and allowed himself to plop on the cold floor before the Judgement Hall, some tears falling from his cheeks. _I want to see them safe, I want to see them saved from themselves, are they this blind? Why have they given in to their murderous intent? Kill or be killed...do you think any of this is right?_

"Come on, human, don't give up right now." Flowey patted Frisk on the back with one of his vines. "You're determined, I can see that. And you're suffering to see them in such a horrible way...Even if I have no idea what you feel, I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Flowey. I still haven't seen Sans..." the child replied as he picked himself up, "I don't know where he is."

 _What happened to him? During the entire journey, I haven't seen him once. And Papyrus didn't tell me what happened, he was content to just ignore me..._ Frisk mentally sighed as he waved goodbye to Flowey and entered in a familiar place, the last place of the Underground, maybe Sans was in there, as he faintly remembered from another timeline.

The Judgement Hall.

The moment Frisk entered the room, he noticed that it was engulfed in darkness, except for his SOUL's faint white light and a red dot at the end of the corridor. Terror was slowly creeping up on his back, as he began advancing through the darkened Judgement Hall, the only sound that he could hear being his footsteps. He could also discern something else, amidst the threatening blackness - a seething intent of killing as he approached the red dot - making his mind go wild with questions and thoughts.

 _Will he outright judge me because I dared to show [MERCY] to everyone?_ Frisk questioned himself, as he stopped just a few paces from the red dot, hearing the skeleton breathing slowly.

As he noticed that the human stopped, Sans clenched his left hand in fury, and left out a chuckle to break through the dampening silence. The small skeleton knew that the human child was both a friend and a killer, and yet a promise was making him hold back on promptly attacking and killing the human whose terrified breathing he could hear. A promise that was uttered somewhere else, in a different timeline, when he didn't feel as hollow as he was now...

 **(Flashback, Grillby's, Pacifist Timeline)**

"kid...i want you to look at me." Sans asked of Frisk, as the boy turned his smiling head towards the skeleton.

"What is it, Sans?" Frisk asked, tilting his smiling head.

"i want you to promise me something." the skeleton said, fiddling with his bony hands.

"Of course, Sans." the human child's smile immediately faded, realising Sans was serious about this.

"promise me you'll never reset. please...don't take away this happiness, don't take away all of our progress." the monster looked at him with worry.

"I swear to you, Sans. I will never, ever, RESET the timeline." Frisk placed a hand on his chest.

 **(End Flashback)**

Now, he was standing in front of a human that looked like he kept his promise - however, he didn't play by the rule of this universe, and he absolutely hated rulebreakers - he remembered mentioning this to someone else, someone who was a dirty brother killer. _but this kiddo before me...he refused to kill anybody, even if everyone was out there to kill him. the rule of the underground is simple, it's kill or be killed..._ Sans thought as he eventually lit up his left hand with a red light, able to see the human before him.

"S-Sans?...I'm so happy to see you!" the human boy said, smiling at the sight of his best friend as he extended his right hand.

"kid...i wish i could say the same, but unfortunately for you..." Sans said, as a sinister smile plastered on his face, "in this world, there's no MERCY. in this world, one like you is a true dielemma."

"Th-that pun wasn't funny..." Frisk gulped as he noticed that Sans's eyes were starting to glow red, yet he kept his stance.

"you just keep disobeying the rule of this world..." the skeleton pointed his red left hand towards Frisk, " **and that is kill or be killed!** "

Frisk felt his SOUL being pulled out, and noticed that Sans's signature blue magic was enveloping him, forcing him to be at the skeleton's proverbial MERCY as the latter tossed him around the room with force, slamming the human child into one of the stone columns of the Hall, and then repeatedly whacking him to the ground. The human child took all the damage with bravery, as his body laid in a huge crater formed by the repeated gravity slams Sans performed on him, while the skeleton clicked his fingers to call out a Gaster Blaster, that growled menacingly in the empty, darkened hall.

With what little power and DETERMINATION he had, Frisk rose from the crater, horribly bruised and battered, as his shirt was full of holes, as well as his pants, and advanced towards the skeleton who sent the Gaster Blaster on Frisk's trail. The blaster discharged its' ray, but Frisk dodged it with agility in spite of his wounds, and kept marching on towards his friend.

"kid, you haven't gained a single point of LOVE. i refuse to believe there can be one such as you! you are an anomaly!" Sans said as he summoned two more Gaster Blasters at his sides.

"Wh-" Frisk coughed a little blood as he stopped just in front of the skeleton, "Wh-Why are you doing this..." the child coughed some more blood, "to me...your best friend?"

"you're **not** my friend! all of your cheesy 'i'm your buddy' thing won't be working on me, kid!" Sans angrily retorted as the two Gaster Blasters he just summoned left their charge towards Frisk, who took the damage in tow once more, and collapsed in front of the skeleton.

DETERMINATION helped Frisk get back on his feet once more, this time, his eyes were shining as he wanted nothing more than show MERCY to this poor, misguided skeleton in front of him. Despite all of the attacks Sans landed on him, Frisk wasn't going to abandon his friend in this darkness, he wasn't going to let him prey to his own insanity, and tried to talk to him once more, even if so far, talking didn't seem to be a solution to this confrontation.

"I really thought..." Frisk took a deep breath, "I really thought you are my friend. You wouldn't lash out at me like this, something changed within you..." the child noticed as his Stick was broken, "What made you fall this far, Sans?..."

"how many times do i have to tell you, kid, **that i don't care?!** " Sans engulfed Frisk's SOUL as he threw the child away into another stone column, making Frisk cough more blood as the internal injuries were slowly catching up to him.

"So...that's how it's going to be..." Frisk chuckled as he saw the skeleton's eyesockets glowing red before him, "you're going to keep on killing me, until I give up, and eventually FIGHT you, isn't it?"

"do me a favor, kid..." Sans growled as he summoned six Gaster Blasters, " **and die already!** "

The six Gaster Blasters's red rays engulfed the child, and Frisk's SOUL broke before Sans for the third time, making the skeleton oddly torn between two conflicting feelings inside his own SOUL, feelings that he thought forgotten for a long time ago. _n-no...this can't be happening! he's not respecting the rule, he doesn't have LOVE...he deserves to die!_ the skeleton thought as he held his skull in pain, while Frisk reformed his SOUL through DETERMINATION.

The human child was wobbly from this fourth reformation, and looked at the two eyesockets that were lighting in the darkness, faintly smiling, yet his smile was never to be seen in all the apparent void that surrounded them. It was the smile of a Pacifist child, who didn't wish for nothing else than seeing his friends saved from themselves, from their haunting nightmares, and as he wanted to comfort the skeleton, Sans started making bones erupt out of the ground, forcing Frisk to dodge the sharp, spear-like bones that threatened to impale him.

"leave me alone, kid!" Sans roared through the darkness, "i don't want to be your friend, i don't need your MERCY!" as he kept summoning bones towards the human child.

"Sans, please, listen to me..." Frisk tried to desperately talk to his friend, but just as he was about to continue his phrase, he was impaled by six sharp bones that erupted on his position, forcing his SOUL to break for the fifth time.

 **[Ethereal Plane]**

As Frisk was on his fifth SOUL-breaking moment, the timeline thought it would be wise if it suspended itself. The human child still didn't understand where he was, but the only thing he could notice were two large prompts and two images, one that showed the darkened Judgement Hall, and underneath wrote CONTINUE, while the other showed Frisk at the beginning of the game, under the image it wrote RESET. Frisk looked with sadness at both prompts, and blinked a little when he heard a strange voice talking to him, as he wasn't able to decide what course of action should he take - and RESET-ting, in his books, was out of the question - and sighed a little.

"Hello there, little child." the voice talked to him, a voice that he could recognize as belonging to a man.

"Wh-who are you?..." Frisk's voice betrayed slight panic as he could hear his heartbeat going faster.

"It doesn't matter, at the moment." the man's voice replied. "What matters is that you complete your journey. You have been through so much, child..."

"L-Look, I-I don't know who you are, but I just want to SAVE S-Sans." the boy sighed as a few tears started to appear in his eyes.

"That is honourable, child..." the man said, "But remember, you have to remind Sans of who he was once."

 _I hate to say this, but he's right with that,_ Frisk thought as he rubbed his chin, _still, how do I make him remind that, as I am kinda bad with puns. Wait! Some skeleton puns will surely help him remind who he was..._

"I will go SAVE him!" Frisk said, DETERMINATION filling his voice and eyes as he pressed the CONTINUE button,

The SOUL was slowly reforming before Frisk's eyes...

 **[Back in Judgement Hall]**

Sans couldn't believe his red glowing eyes as the SOUL was reforming - if he was honest with himself, he almost expected the child to RESET - but when he saw the human appearing before him in a bright light, good as new, as if the previous injuries never existed, it filled him with rage. He doubted his opponent's motives since the first time they talked, and he wasn't going to let down his guard, not even if the one before him was truly Frisk, _what the hell does he think he will achieve with that, huh? sparing me endlessly, dying before me a thousand times?_ was one of the thoughts that ran through the skeleton's skull, while on the other side he hoped that the kid was dead, so he could bring the news to Asgore.

"so, you're back again, eh?" Sans left out a chuckle. "well, you're really persistent, i give you that!"

"Why do you think I keep coming back, Sans?" Frisk said, as he approached the skeleton.

"i think you just want to be killed a milion times, kid. are you enjoying this, perchance?" Sans said, his voice wavering a little.

"No. I'm here because your freedom means something to me." Frisk kept talking, as he was closer to Sans than before.

"still keeping this act of MERCY? didn't you understand i'm not enjoying this little game of yours?" the skeleton retorted, as he felt the human's hand touching his skull.

"This is no game, Sans. This is about seeing you all alive and well." the human boy said as he gently carressed the skeleton's skull.

" **shut up, kid!** " Sans roared as he grabbed Frisk by his throat, " **in this damned world, there's only darkness, dust and death! when are you going to get it?!** "

"S-Sans...th-there's a-always h-hope!" Frisk said, as he gaped for air and struggled to free himself from Sans' powerful grip.

"there's no such thing as hope in here, kid! **give up!** " the skeleton tightened his grip around Frisk's neck.

"D-Do y-you r-really h-hate me t-that much?" the boy managed to choke out between air gaps.

Sans felt something overpowering him for a moment, as he dropped the grip on the child, and Frisk looked at the vague form of his friend with sheer mortification, he couldn't believe that Sans was out there to kill him, and that he was completely devoid of any positive emotions. Yet the child refused to believe in such a thing, he refused to believe there was no way of redemption for his fallen friend.

 _Toriel..._

 _Papyrus..._

 _Undyne..._

 _Alphys..._

 _Don't you understand, Sans?...I'm here to save you...Why you, out of everyone else, refuse to be saved from your darkest fears?_ Frisk thought as he kept looking at the vague form of his skeleton friend.

"kid...you should be glad i didn't decide to kill you again. this is my way of showing [MERCY]...but each time i deny you the satisfaction of seeing me redeemed, you just **keep coming back!** and that... **makes me seriously pissed!** " Sans said as he summoned ten Gaster Blasters, ready to aim for the human before him. "any last words, kiddo?"

" **Enough** **!** " Frisk's voice bellowed in the room, as his SOUL began shining a pure white, illuminating the face of his friend, who seemed completely puzzled at how fearless the boy seemed to be. "Do you think I've come down here just to leave you alone? Are you that thick-skulled? I'd be going through Hell itself for all of you! Toriel, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, you and Asgore! Don't you get it? **You're all my friends!** "

"kid, don't you get the point? i'm tired to see you **toying around with my life!** " Sans yelled, ready to let the ten Gaster Blasters shoot the child before him.

"Do you think I've forgotten my promise to you, Sans? I promised I would never RESET!" Frisk said as he touched his friend's shoulder.

"then why i don't believe you kid? i've seen you killing all of us..." the skeleton's eyes began glowing red again, "tell me, why should i believe you?"

"I would never do that, I swear, I swear!" the human boy's voice broke right there as tears were filling his eyes.

 _"Wh-what is he talking about?! I-I've never RESET, I w-would never kill them...T-They're all my friends...Is S-Sans knowing something th-that I don't?"_ Frisk was panicking inside his mind as he looked at the fearsome Gaster Blasters around him and heard their menacing growls. He then decided to ask Sans what was all this about, still wondering why his friend thought this about him.

"kid...trust me, i want to believe you." Sans's voice was somewhat wavering.

"Sans, that couldn't have been me! I love you all...A-And I-I remember you t-told me about the real meaning of LV! H-how c-can you think I-I would do any of this?" Frisk's voice wavered as well. "Y-you're my br-brother!...And so is Papyrus!"

Sans sighed a little before calling out the blasters, "okay...okay, i believe you, kid. only frisk would panic that way when confronted with their sins...i still don't understand, why did you go this far to SAVE me?"

"Because you're my brobones..." Frisk smiled as he hugged the skeleton.

The darkness within the Judgement Hall vanished, as Sans was wearing a red jacket now, and kept the boy in his arms as they both listened to the birds that were singing blissfully outside the Delta-runed windows. He couldn't believe that Frisk would go down this far just to prove him wrong, that he would die countless times just to SAVE him, and yet he felt better at the sight before him, the light suddenly warming his tired bones.

"thank you...for saving me, frisk."


End file.
